1. Field of the Invention
Generally, the present invention relates to online events, and more specifically to online broadband digital broadcast video events.
2. Related Art
Content of various types, such as, e.g., but not limited to, video content, related to an event is often accessible online. An example of such content is a digital video feed such as, e.g., streaming video content. Even today in the world of digital video recorders (DVRs) and Podcasts, audiences generally still prefer to view some types of events live, such as, e.g., late breaking news events and live events such as weather broadcasts, interviews, sporting events, the OSCARS®, and the like. In certain cases, when a large number of users all desire to access the same online broadcast event, all at the same time, individual performance may degrade caused by limited resources such as bandwidth constraints, for example. Conventionally, very large numbers of concurrent users to such an online event, can cause a website to become disabled from excessive resource demands. Thus, solutions have been sought to provide concurrent access to such broadcast content while delivering an acceptable level of user access time, and response time. Limited bandwidth and other network resources have required content providers to develop ways to meter user access to the resources, to ensure acceptable enduser performance. One exemplary conventional method of metering access has been via requiring fee-based subscriptions. For example, the Wall Street Journal's online service wsj.com conventionally limits access to its site to users by charging a fee to users. A fee-based registration system may be used to provide access to subscribers, which have registered. A registration-based system requires that sufficient bandwidth resources be available, or risks dissatisfying registered users. Thus, excess resources may go unused when registered users do not actually attempt to access the online content for which they are registered. Another shortcoming of fee-based registration is that fees must be paid by users, so this may limit an audience to a smaller number than supportable by the technology and network resources such as, e.g., bandwidth, available.
Capacity Comparisons Industry “High-Water Marks”
Historically, CBS SportsLine® has been providing online access to events such as, e.g., but not limited to, the NCAA Mens' Basketball tournament, referred to herein as the March Madness on Demand (“Paid MMOD”). Recent volumes of concurrent users for large online events include the following:
A widely heralded online broadcast by retailer VICTORIA'S SECRET® in 1999, prepared for 500,000 peak simultaneous concurrent users but the website became disabled for many users upon access by the 0.5 million viewers.
During the Chinese TV Chinese New Year Celebration on Feb. 8, 2005, 132,000 peak simultaneous users (handled by Speedera, now part of Akamai), accessed the celebration.
On Jul. 2, 2005, greater than 5 million viewers, 175,000 peak simultaneously (using almost 70 Gb of network capacity) accessed America Online's (AOL's) Live 8—http://theage.com.au/articles/2005/07/06/1120329474555.html.
During Yahoo.com's Dec. 16, 2005 Howard Stern Sirius Radio event—http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/051221/20051221005197.html?.v=1, used 4.4M video streams, and 214,000 peak simultaneous concurrent accesses.
During a March 2006, FREE March Madness on Demand (MMOD) event of CBS SportsLine.com, peak accesses occurred on March 16th and 17th, it was planned that 200 k-300 k peak simultaneous 400 kbps video streams were served, for a total of ˜100 gbps peak bandwidth.
Thus, an improved method of providing access to an online event supporting large numbers of simultaneous concurrent users is needed that overcomes the shortcomings of conventional solutions.